Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper ordered the country's Parliament to be dissolved, kicking off an extended election campaign in which the Conservative leader will vie for a fourth term amid a deteriorating economy.

Top 5 market gurus. Of all the commentators out there, these guys seem to have the deepest understanding of what is actually happening in the global economy and markets, as well as the strongest track record for being right in their analysis and predictions, in *both* directions, bullish and bearish. Not coincidentally, they are usually in agreement with each other, though they may frame concepts in different ways.

3) Mark Dow – hedge fund manager, Pharo Capital. Very good global, "big picture" analysis, makes interesting tie-ins to behavioral economics and evolutionary psychology, highlights a lot of situations where market players are right, but for the wrong reasons (that is, situations where market players embrace an explanatory model that is factually false, but that leads to trades that work for completely unrelated reasons. Classic example: dollar debasement theories of Austrian economists such as Peter Schiff. Shorting the dollar has been the right secular trade for past decade, but not because anyone is debasing it. See article below).

5) Andrew Smithers - The world's greatest authority on stock market valuation. Extremely thorough and data-oriented, tends to notice very subtle but important factors driving markets that no one else notices:

Honorable mention: John Hussman. http://www.hussmanfunds.com His work is a weekly must-read IMO, however, his moral attachment to the bearish view on stocks (a view which I happen to share), makes him a bit less reliable in terms of predicting what will actually happen. He sometimes lets the question of what "should happen in a rational market" interfere with the far more important question of what "will happen given that the economy often is not rational."